The evolution of race and place in geographies of risk and resilience

Abstract

Progress in Environmental Geography advances equity and justice at the intersections of people and place. Natural disasters represent a granular lens into this space and highlight opportunities to incorporate social landscapes with their physical geographies toward sustained systemic progress. More specifically, disproportionate geographies of flood risk and resilience exemplify cyclical power dynamics, exploitation, and oppression that have shaped places globally. The U.S. provides a particular focus into the evolution of access to space and place; racialized geographies often exclude Black Americans from land, resources, mobility, and representation. Following Emancipation, limited physical and economic opportunity codified formal and informal discrimination that led to heightened flood risk that persists today via housing markets, building conditions, infrastructure, and more. These inequities leave many communities disproportionately more impacted by economic, health, and well-being losses from flooding, which exacerbates cyclical disinvestment. Urban geographies around the world exhibit racially and ethnically charged patterns of heightened risk and weakened resilience, yet many efforts toward equity treat the issues of race and place as separate, novel challenges. Progress, equity, and justice at the intersection of people (and resilience) with place (and risk) are rooted in reparation along ethnographic and sociological chasms that have shaped geographies globally for centuries.